Chapter 5 #2
“I would rather be with you.” He walked across the room to her, and, yes, that was definitely alarm in her face.
Not fear, at least, but he could almost see her striving for the cool, half-amused indifference with which she had treated him for months.
As though she was hurt that he hadn’t believed her reason for marrying him.
“Because I loved you.”
What had it cost her to say those words? As much as it had cost him to speak the truth of his profound attraction?
He leaned toward her and reached over her shoulder to the open drawer of her jewelry box.
It looked like a child’s box, lined with soft but faded purple velvet.
It was hardly worthy of the Marchioness of Corey, and she had clearly not replaced it when she had bought her trousseau—at Corey’s expense as per the agreement he had made with her grasping father.
Her soft, floral perfume disturbed him. He thought her breathing had quickened. So had his, at the tempting nearness of her decolletage. He grasped the pearl necklace.
“Is this what you wished to wear? Allow me.”
Although she went very still, she did not demur. He placed the pearls around her creamy throat, letting them drop a little toward her tantalizing breasts, and closed the fastening at her delicate nape.
For an instant, their eyes met in the glass. He could not read her confused expression.
“Do you know how very beautiful you are?”
She rose abruptly, forcing him to step back. “I do not need flattery to survive, my lord. I don’t even like it.”
“I never flatter,” he said in genuine surprise. “And yesterday morning you called me Leo.”
“That morning, I said too many unwise things.”
He raised one eyebrow. “You wish to change your answer to my question?”
A stab of anger flashed from her eyes. “To make you feel better? You must be the only man in Christendom who does not care to be loved.” She spun around to face him, her cheeks flushed.
“I did not say that. In fact, I care to be the only man who is loved.”
A frown tugged at her brows. “You make no sense.”
“Apparently not.” And her incomprehension seemed genuine. Had he got this wrong somehow? Hope surged, catching at his breath.
Giving himself time, he stepped further back and examined his wife’s overall appearance. “Almost perfection. Perhaps a bracelet to emphasize your slender wrist? The ruby bracelet would look well with your gown.”
“I disagree,” she said at once. “Besides, I have decided to keep the rubies for the grand ball at the end of our stay.”
He brushed past her, pulling open the other drawers in that childish chest. “What else do you have?”
The modest gold locket she had worn last night—and on several previous occasions, he recalled—lay in one drawer. The others were empty.
He frowned. “Is this all you brought?”
“It’s all I have,” she said shortly, then added, “Apart from the rubies, of course, which are in their own case. Shall we join the party? Or shall I forgo dinner, if my lord is dissatisfied with my appearance?”
He turned to her in some consternation. She strode to the bed, swiping up the gloves and reticule which lay there.
She was ashamed of having so little. But it was he who should be ashamed.
He had always known she had come to him with nothing.
And yet he had made her only one gift, which she kept in a child’s jewelry box.
Because he had been too proud, too hurt to pay attention to her.
Even the rubies, his grandiose gesture of trust, had not been the thoughtful, personally chosen gift she deserved.
Already, she was sweeping out of the bedchamber, her head held high. His throat tightened. Hastily, he strode after her and offered her his arm.
He paused, his hand on the door. “I believe the evening’s entertainment is a card party. Do you have enough coin to see you through?”
“Of course,” she said with icy grandeur. Then her eyes flickered. “Art just paid me back five-and-twenty pounds I had lent him for the races.”
His eyebrows flew up involuntarily. “Art won?”
“Astonishing, isn’t it?” The smile was almost back in her eyes.
So that was the reason for Art’s brief visit before they left Sanford. He was only paying her back, not carrying love notes from his crony, Livesey-White. Or not necessarily.
“Before you ask,” she said in a rush, “I have never lent anything to the rest of them. I knew Art would pay me back eventually.”
This was the honesty he had always associated with her, that had always stood out like a beacon amongst the murky, grasping deceit of the rest of the Raymonds.
With the possible exception of Art, who was a mere rakehell and whom she seemed to hold in some affection.
The others, even her parents, she had been happy to leave behind.
No wonder she had married him to escape them.
It was all food for thought, and for his growing belief that he had maligned her in his mind. A fierce surge of longing for her love took him by surprise. He shoved it aside as he conducted her downstairs to join the party. But he could never suppress it entirely.